Kiki’s Delivery Service – DVD Review

The Film:

It’s Hayao Miyazaki’s way of taking a story and wrapping it in gorgeous animation with real-life themes that sets him apart from anyone else who just make cartoons. Kiki’s Delivery Service isn’t Miyazaki’s best, in my opinion, but let’s not compare red apples to green apples, because they’re all delicious. If anything, the film is sweet and earnest, and such warm traits seem to be a lost art now days.

In most of Miyazaki’s films he is exploring innocence of children and their growth into adulthood. With Kiki’s Delivery Service he repeats these themes as Kiki, a blossoming witch, sets off on her 13th birthday to go find herself as a witch, but thematically, as a person. Kiki is a sweet character who is endlessly charming in her wide-eyed determination and appreciation. Like most of Miyazaki’s films, it’s not necessarily about plot points or climaxes, but the fluidity of daily life and how things happen. The city she seeks out is a hustle and bustle town, a vastly opposite from her farm community she originated from. It’s curious to see her in the city, alien to the speeding traffic and fast-paced people, and where does she choose to be? A bakery. It’s something that is at her place, with a small resemblance to her farmland home.

Kiki’s Delivery Service wows more in terms of Miyazaki’s thematic ideas of the duality of independence and reliance in Japanese girls, more than its plot. It’s charming to see a character in animation, struggle yet through struggling comes out better for it. It’s just another reason in a long line of reasons why Hayao Miyazaki is a great in this medium. This new Special Edition DVD is the third American release and perhaps the best. There have been changes from the translation that offered up little dialogue issues and music cues, most notably the opening and closing songs. This new version restores the original Japanese opening and closing songs, along with going back to Miyazaki’s intended minimalistic audio design.

The DVD:

Audio/Video: Disney’s new re-release of the film looks great here. The image is slightly better than the previous edition of a few years back. The colors are nice and the lines are well-defined. The film has been enhanced for 16×9 TVs and it looks really good, throughout. The audio features a few tracks. The English dub might help the film reach a wider audience and it a nice, clean track. The preferred option is the Japanese track. It’s a front heavy sound design, but no matter which track you listen too, it’ll be a solid track.

To coincide with Disney’s Ponyo Blu-ray and DVD releases, they have re-released a few Studio Ghibli films back on DVD.

Disc One’s extras feature an Introduction by John Lasseter for about 45 seconds as he praises Miyazaki and a Storyboard Presentation of the Film.

Disc Two features a collection of old extras and new ones in The World of Ghibli that is broken up into two sections. Behind the Studio offers the wealth of information through a handful of featurettes and interviews. Covering the project from ideas to locations that inspired Miyazaki. Fans of the film will love this section. Enter the Lands is much like the other discs, where it’s a layout of the Ghibli studio as an interactive map, where you can find trailers and basic info on the films and characters.

Conclusion: Another solid Miyazaki film on another solid Disney DVD.

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating: